Andor Creator Tony Gilroy Wrote The Most Underrated Stephen King Adaptation

"Andor" mastermind Tony Gilroy might just be the hottest thing in the galaxy far, far away (as well as ours) when it comes to groundbreaking genre fiction. Of course, he didn't exactly appear out of thin air to slam his nuanced, multi-year grassroots story about the formation of the Rebel Alliance on the table.

Prior to "Andor," Gilroy was already a highly esteemed filmmaker with two Academy Award nominations for both writing and directing the 2007 George Clooney legal thriller "Michael Clayton" — not to mention, he also wrote the sci-fi franchise's previous Great Underdog Tale featuring Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), i.e. 2016's "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story." But even before that, Gilroy had proven himself a capable blockbuster operator with his script work on Michael Bay's 1998 killer asteroid film "Armageddon." On top of all that, he co-wrote the 1997 Al Pacino-Keanu Reeves horror legal drama "The Devil's Advocate" and the first four "Bourne" movies, in addition to directing "The Bourne Legacy" (the 2012 spin-off starring Jeremy Renner). You get it. Gilroy is a combination of a solid Jack of all trades and an outright visionary. Basically, he's the kind of guy who many folks would no doubt really, really like to have holding the reins of their favorite franchise.

This is why Stephen King fans may be delighted to discover that Gilroy actually wrote one of the horror master's most under-appreciated movie adaptations. Perhaps due to its lack of conventional King monsters, 1995's "Dolores Claiborne" never really got the cultural attention it deserved despite having a great cast and earning solid critical praise. If you're one of the people who haven't seen the film yet, it's high time to correct course. Here's why.

The sheer amount of talent involved in making "Dolores Claiborne" boggles the mind. Apart from Gilroy's script work, the movie was directed by Taylor Hackford, who would go on to helm the Oscar-winning 2004 Ray Charles biopic "Ray" and already had films like 1982's "An Officer and a Gentleman" (one of the best military movies of all time) on his résumé at the time. Meanwhile, the titular character is played by Kathy Bates, who was five years removed from her previous, Oscar-winning Stephen King film performance as the chilling "Misery" villain Annie Wilkes.

The rest of the cast features names like Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Plummer, Judy Parfitt, John C. Reilly, David Straitharn, and Eric Bogosian, all of whom remembered to bring their A-game and are clearly having a good time. In fact, in an interview with NPR's Neal Conan in 2011, Bates named Dolores Claiborne her favorite role at that point, thanks to the immersive approach Hackford afforded her:

"He gave me a couple of months before we started shooting — which is rare in film — to really prepare for the role. I worked with a dialect coach for the Maine dialect. And I worked with a movement coach to try and understand the difference in moving when you're 35 years old with — you know, we see Dolores — and then at 55 years old, when she's had a hard life. And so, we — he also brought in some of the best wig and makeup artists from Italy to help me make that age change. And I had the movement and the dialect coach there on set with me for every take, so that I could make sure I was doing Dolores and not me."

Some Stephen King adaptations have to wait for a very long time before someone gets them right, with director Francis Lawrence's emotionally obliterating "The Long Walk" springing to mind. Not so with "Dolores Claiborne," though, as it was adapted into a movie fairly soon after King's original 1992 novel of the same name was published. This wasn't a huge surprise, either, considering the recent success of "Misery," a fellow adaptation of a comparatively "mundane" and otherwise non-supernatural King story.

However, where "Misery" has a clear elevator pitch plot involving a twisted fan capturing a famous author (played by James Caan), "Dolores Claiborne" is ... complicated, which might be what caused it to fade into obscurity in the first place. The movie is a web of half-remembered memories, assumptions, and hidden truths that interweave and unfold as the story progresses. Of course, it all revolves around the complex Dolores, spanning two timelines that deal with a pair of deaths that she may or may not be responsible for — her husband's (David Strathairn) in 1975 and her employer's (Judy Parfitt) in 1995.

It's possible that "a middle-aged woman stands accused of a senior citizen's murder" is simply a far less enticing Stephen King premise than, say, "an immortal killer clown feasts on children's fear," which could explain why "Dolores Claiborne" lingers in comparative cultural obscurity as far as King adaptations go. Still, it's very much an "If you know, you know" work that those who have seen it tend to appreciate. This, in turn, might be why King himself considers "Dolores Claiborne" to be one of the best Stephen King movies.